Sexualities
edited by Nivedita Menon
Women Unlimited, 2007
Just before the start of the Seventh National Conference of Women's Movements, held in September last year in Calcutta, the organising committee was forced to wrestle with a new question. In and of itself, this process was nothing new. Such conferences have long been voluntary efforts, organised by women's groups for women, and every preparation process sees debates on what exactly constitutes a women's group: is the criterion women members only, or is it women's leadership, or is it a focus on women's issues? While such discussions have led to a realisation of the complexities around various feminist ideologies and attempts to organise women, at the September meeting a seemingly basic question was finally discussed: Who is a 'woman'? And, can those who identify as 'female' but are not biologically female take part in the conference?
For a movement that, just a decade and a half ago, had been struggling with issues of whether same-sex desire was 'natural', and whether lesbian-women's issues should be considered a priority, this was a huge shift. For the first time, discussions within women's movements had moved towards a more realistic and nuanced understanding of genders and sexualities, in the plural.
In such a context, it is apt that one of the volumes in Women Unlimited's "Contemporary Issues in Indian Feminism" series should, finally, be titled Sexualities. It is also refreshing to see that some of the complexities with which the women's movement and women's-studies scholars are currently grappling have found space in the volume, edited by Nivedita Menon. Having long talked about sexuality within the framework of sexual violence, recent challenges to women's movements and feminist theories have come from 'transgressive' and marginalised sexualities. The simple fact that Menon's volume focuses on these challenges, highlighting the various voices for expression of desire, is in itself one of the most significant contributions made by any book on sexualities published today.